Quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
